Fredrick Moyo
Civil Society Organisations have expressed dissatisfaction over the timeframe within which Zimbabwe electoral Commission (ZEC) has proposed to conduct the biometric voter registration saying the dates present a limited duration that is likely to result in more people missing out on the exercise.
ZEC released the mobile registration exercise dates that will be conducted in two phases; the first phase being from February 1-18 while the second runs from April 11-30, 2022.
Election Resource Centre (ERC) Legal and Advocacy Officer Takunda Tsunga said the framework given by ZEC is restrictive, prohibitive to marginalized communities and long term solutions should be put in place to aid voter registration.
“As ERC, we continually state that the current framework for the blitz is extremely prohibitive. It is restrictive to marginalized communities who have limited access to voter registration centres due to financial constraints or due to long distances. However, we continuously advocate for longer term solutions needed to be put in place to bridge the gap between voter registration centres and citizens.
“We should use these dates to test the administrative capacity of the electoral commission to be able to undertake this exercise. We should also test the willingness of citizens to participate in electoral processes such as voter registration. I think once we engage citizens on this issue, we will be able to gauge the empathy or willingness of citizens to participate in electoral processes. In order for us to be able to reach a large audience, it takes coordinated efforts between ZEC, CSO’s, political parties and citizens themselves to mobilize each other to go and register to vote,” said Tsunga.
Community Tolerance Reconciliation and Development (COTRAD) Programmes Officer Ishmael Kupfuwa said they applaud ZEC’s efforts in embarking on a blitz but the time is limited to reach every willing participant.
“As CSOs we appreciate efforts by ZEC in trying to reach many people through the blitz. However, the timeframe is too limited for both ZEC and CSOs to reach every corner with voter education and most importantly for potential voters to register to vote.
“Therefore the blitz should be given more time and ZEC should decentralize some voter registration even at constituency level so that people who cannot afford to travel to ZEC district and or provincial offices can go register their names in their constituencies,” said Kupfuwa.
ZEC Masvingo deputy Provincial Election Officer (PEO), Maxwell Ncube said they are looking forward for the blitz to reach every willing citizen who want to partake in the registration process and will not comment on the blitz time frame as it is only meant for those who did have time to reach registration offices.
“The mobile registration exercise is expected to cover every ward in the province and the citing of the registration centres in wards was informed by the vastness of the ward and the centrality of those centres in relationship to the ward. I will not comment on the view of the CSO’s on the time factor, but time will never be enough though we hope to register all willing citizens.
“This is just a mop-up exercise to cater for those who did not have time to visit our offices. It does not necessarily mean that we are closing offices after mobile registration. The issue of restrictive and prohibitive nature of our programmes is something else that I cannot comment on, but the whole idea is that we tried as much as we can within the provided space to make sure everybody and every ward is catered for and we are hoping that everyone who is willing would come and register,” said Ncube.
ZEC had shelved the mobile voter registration blitz that was supposed to begin in December 2021 saying a number of new registrants had no national identity documents.
